Rising Dark Currents
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: He promised never to embrace evil again, but he may just have to break it. With darkness rising and the light of the Chosen being slowly stifled, he'll have to embrace his own evil in order to defeat it as a whole...or will he chose death instead?
1. Prologue

**Author's Notes**

Well, here is the rewrite to **Of Darkness, Death and Destruction** which I've by the way deleted when I posted this, as I forewarned. Same old plot, same old characters (sort of), though completely rewritten, with few changes.

Firstly, I'm using the Japanese names. The muse's fault.

Secondly, the writing standard for the old version was, in my opinion, atrocious. I can do better.

Third, I've come off the whole changing POV thing, that was something I did when I was more an ametaur, starting out at fanfiction. So this fic is entirely in Ken's POV.

Fourth, I think I came off the rails in the other story, so that needed fixing too.

Fifth, a reread told me some parts were lacking depth. Which is seriously needed in this story at particular points.

So that all amounted to the rewrite.

Enjoy, and tell me what you think. Better than the last one, or the same? (Please don't tell me it's worse, it can't be!)

* * *

**Rising Dark Currents**

He promised never to embrace evil again, but he may just have to break it. With darkness rising and the light of the Chosen being slowly stifled, he'll have to embrace his own evil in order to defeat it as a whole...or will he choose death instead?

Ken I

Rating: T

Genre/s: Drama/Angst

* * *

**Prologue**

Waves lapped against the rocky walls, soaking the cuffs of my pyjama bottoms as I stood amidst the dark waters, churning like the turmoil and conflict it represented and thrived off. The murky waters revealed not its secrets, covering all with the blanket of blackness it cloaked over the mysterious depths, and even at the very edge of a world I knew so little about, I could barely hold himself back from screaming in pure terror.

I hoped it was a dream, really I did; I may be rationally oriented, but hope, so difficultly gained, was something I was unwilling to relinquish my hold on. Call it a fool's hope if you will, most after all do, but is it really foolish holding on to hope and optimism in the darker hours to retain the will to re-enter the light that awaits at the end of the black tunnel? Not at all, and no amount of knowledge, intellect or power can teach a person that...another thing I learnt the hard way.

Though the Dark Ocean had a way of making that lesson very difficult to abide by. Even if it was a dream. And _especially_ if it was a dream, because that alternate realm we explore within our unconscious is founded upon the thoughts and emotions buried deep within our hearts, and are nothing less than the truth...even if we attempt to flee from them at times.

So the Dark Ocean lapping at my feet meant one of three things.

Only I wasn't given sufficient time to dwell on that problem when something grabbed my leg and I really did scream.

'No need to shout,' the dark shadow at my feet gasped out, figureless head bursting through the surface for air while the rest remained under the water which was knee height for me. 'Thoughts speak louder than words after all.'

He (assuming the figure was male, it was difficult to tell without an actual _face_) smirked devilishly, something I considered rather odd amidst the circumstances. Though that tidbit of information was instantly recorded, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, as Wormmon, my parents, and the Chosen had done for me even as then, and even now from time to time when the past resurfaced, I felt was more than I deserved.

'Do you need some help?' I asked instead, offering a hand, which I concluded afterward was an incredibly _stupid_ thing to do. But the spreading ripples and disturbed splashes told me the figure, whatever he was, was flailing desperately, and perhaps only the hand clasped around my ankle kept his head about water.

He took my hand, then blinked up at me, the yellow, owlish eyes penetrating right through my own blue ones. Then he smirked again, slowly this time, before I felt my weight toppling forward as gravity (with the additional help of the hand which jerked me) pulled me down into the ocean of darkness.

Pain seared from my right wrist; I assumed the other had scratched it, and the pain burned furthermore with the contact with water, even as its very nature differed to the conventional water we humans in our world took for granted.

I had closed my eyes on instinct when my body hit the water with enough force to only deliver a very subtle shock. I forced them open, holding my breath and expecting to see...well, I cannot entirely fathom what it was that I had expected to envision, but I can safely state that the visions of my guilt-ridden past was certainly not it.

Something felt leaded in my hand, and my clothes clung to me, though not in the sense that moisture caused the suction. A quick look cleared the confusion; the object I held was a whip, heavily coated with the blood of the digimon I had tortured under it, digimon I had believed were nothing more than bits of data in a computer game and easily reset when the need arose. And the skin-tight suit, and the fluttering cape and hair which I had failed to notice upon the first evaluation, was...it was the Digimon Kaiser's facade.

At my feet, shivering and shimmering, was Wormmon...well, it was, until it melted into other digimon: Veemon, Hawkmon, Armadillomon, Patamon, Tailmon-they were the other Chosen's partners. Then others, some I recognised by names, others only by sight, but I knew they were all digimon I had hurt under my rule as Kaiser. And they were all digimon who had forgiven me for them. Digimon who had believed I was truly sorry for what I had done. Digimon who were willing to give me a second chance.

I pulled at the gloves with slight desperation. How could this be happening? Why? I'd changed. Hadn't I? I wasn't the Digimon Kaiser anymore. That was over. That was the past. Then why?

That particular mantra had repeated itself several times before my mind took full stock of it. But it amounted to the same thing anyway. And the swirling mass of darkness (that was what it was now) shifted yet again, it was not a digimon staring back at me, but something I cannot begin to describe, even if I somehow worked up the courage.

I was not the Chosen of Courage. I was Kindness.

But when I had been the Kaiser, I was cruel.

'_The past cannot completely change, nor can it be hidden. It just is, so then can you deny what you were, and are? Can you deny that evil exists within? Because that is the truth you see...'_

'...because that is the truth I see...'

The unconscious has a way of revealing things we wish to deny, though that is not always the case. Sometimes, it shows us a complex dilemma, a paradigm which required thought, a problem which needs to be solved.

As it was with this. But that was something I learnt later. Far later.

After all, this was just the beginning of a new saga.


	2. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes**

Same situation as Shinjitsu to be honest. Except the non-existence of a plan and the fact that Adventure 02 was in desperate need of a rewatch, which I'm currently getting through at three episodes a week since uni started. Which means rathe chaotic updates unfortunately, depending on a lot more that it would in breaks.

Ignoring all that, enjoy, and sorry about the late update again. *Winces* I really need to stop making a habit of that, but I can't keep my brain on a leash.

* * *

**Rising Dark Currents**

He promised never to embrace evil again, but he may just have to break it. With darkness rising and the light of the Chosen being slowly stifled, he'll have to embrace his own evil in order to defeat it as a whole...or will he choose death instead?

Ken I

Rating: T

Genre/s: Drama/Angst

* * *

**Chapter 1**

The world's tale never seems to truly end. Always, they'll be another path, another walker, another story budding from an older stem...it almost makes one wonder if the entire process of the universe's progressive existence is infinite? But it is theorised that parallel lines, defined to never meet, cross at infinity, that lines ever nearing a line but never reaching them on reality's plane pass over the defined asymptote at infinity. Then can it not be assumed that infinity too carries its limitations?

The world is a flawed one, but I cannot even begin to imagine perfection. Once, I saw my brother as its epitome, but years later and a lifetime of darkness taught me the truth...even if it was too late for Osamu. But perfection is the asymptote that can only be reached in a world we cannot, a world farther than the stars shining in the sky like a point of guidance, even as day by day we humans, little pieces of dust compared to the vast expanse we cannot even begin to fully exploit and yet we still coexist with, grow closer and closer to what could be the peak of our existence.

Sometimes, I would think that time had come and gone with closed eyes, but hope still lives and light still shines. It's a miracle how the foundations of the very reality we exist upon rely on the traits prominent in us all, those manifested in our crests, in our hearts, in our past and future...but we had never really realised, except to a small extent with cruelty's whip in the grasp of the Digimon Kaiser, that the opposite would also hold true.

We always knew darkness existed, day by day we witnessed the remaining remnants of BelialVamdemon's rampage and the destruction he wrought, slowly reviving under the light of Oikawa's sacrifice...but we never considered it to held up the balance of our worlds.

We never knew how important it really was, even with the lessons the Dark Spores left behind.

Because the original, unlike the copy, held so much more than a simple seed from which a dark tree sprouted.

And that story, like all others, had a beginning which was obscured in the unknown and an end in the flawed infinity. But when narrating such tales, one must begin somewhere, and so I shall.

My name in Ken. Ichijouji Ken. I've been called a lot of names in the thirteen years I've lived my life: starting by the dear younger brother and spreading to Onii-chan's shadow and a boy genius following and surpassing his footsteps before personifying into the Digimon Kaiser. And then the Child of Kindness as my eyes finally opened to the true me I had buried beneath a whip and visor and I set about trying to maintain a promise I had been well along the way to break.

Names are a funny thing to be sure. They're more labels than anything, stickers plastered by people not willing to look further than the surface. Relationships begin to develop, that eventually stem down to one name, one identity...the one granted to us at birth.

But the main purpose of such names was their defining purpose. Their main flaw was the prejudices they wrought while fulfilling such.

But there are some things beyond our understanding. Some things that, till this day, remain nameless.

* * *

Awakening after a nightmare is no pleasant experience, but this was made particularly objectionable due to the dampness that had persisted. The Dark Ocean is a world neither real nor imaginary, but something in between. Like how Hikari had phased in and out before being entirely pulled through and even then still somewhat present in this world. Like how we: Miyako, Hikari and myself, had wandered into the phase warp while still retaining a small presence in the digital world.

I wondered what had happened while I slept, and what anyone else knew. But it looked as though Wormmon had not awoken through the night, something I was glad for. Things were over, or so I thought. Old demons need not keep my friend from rest as they sometimes did for me.

Morning rituals were continued as they normally did, with the added addition of the hairdryer to dry my bed, seeing as I didn't want my mother questioning the cause, nor any embarrassment at any misunderstanding that could occur. My parents were rather heavy sleepers, so they remained ignorant to the happenings with the four walls of my room, though Wormmon awoke to the slightly irritating noise the contraption gave.

But he never asks. Sometimes I think he knows me more than I know myself.

That's another fallibility of us humans. Even looking into a mirror, we only see the surface. It takes someone else to see the world underneath.

I look, and I see a boy who has just touched his teenage years, straight navy blue hairs low cut to hang just above the base of my neck, dark blue eyes that Wormmon claims looks like the night sky or the deep ocean; he is one of those who believe that there is a world of truth simply within a person's eyes.

I used to be one of those people too, but somewhere along the way I lost faith in reading that. Every day I'd see cold, blocked eyes staring back at me in a remote fashion that embraced cruelty and blindness while kindness should have been their forte, large doe ones begging, eternally begging for a ceasefire and being constantly denied, unable to do more for loyalty though day by day that loyalty thinned, never wavering. Others, assorted of a fashion, hurt, anger, and much else besides...and I had either not seen or else ignored.

'Ken-chan?'

Wormmon was always there, no matter what happened. No matter what will; though that is perhaps so big a prophecy that one cannot say it in complete confidence, I know he will. If not physically, his presence will remain imprinted in my mind, a promise I made long ago that now stood as my lifeline, buried under layers of a new world I was slowly forming around myself.

Old accustoms were rather difficult to break; I had cemented a position in society as the boy genius, taking and surpassing my older brother who himself had been stuck in the same societal trap. 'When his soul became free, yours became trapped.' That is what Oikawa-san had said; there is a respect now, knowing who he was beyond BelialVamdemon's host, and knowing what he had sacrificed. Those butterflies still surface the world, slowly bringing life back to a place that had tethered on destruction.

And looking at the world now, two years after that fight and the last grand-scale problem in the digital world (there were still scrimmages and the sort now and then, along with the problematic dark towers that were still semi-operational. They had come from the Dark Ocean after all, infused with the negative energy it harnessed, so it was a necessary chore to manually knock them down.

But the digimon I think are far more forgiving than humans. Starting with Wormmon himself, and the Poyomon from the village of Beginnings to many others who eventually accept the change from Kaiser to Chosen as something permanent; some were far more quick to trust than others, myself included in the latter. It had after all taken BelialVamdemon's illusions to secure my footholds in a place where I was immeasurably a part of.

'You're thinking again.'

I couldn't help but laugh gently at the innocent tone. I knew what he meant of course; the tone a person spoke could often tell more than the words itself. It wasn't defined worry, like it had been those times I heard voices taunting my hold of darkness, then later, those that called me back to my sins as I then could not let go. Nor was it a redundant statement; the world would cease moving once humankind stopped thinking. It was more something in between.

The light blue eyes looked up at me as Wormmon attempted to latch on to my shirt with his forepaws, sitting contently on my chest as I sat in the partially reclining desk chair.

'Just a nightmare,' I sighed, knowing the hidden question while simultaneously knowing I would never be able to lie to his face.

'Of?' he prompted, examining me with a scrutiny only he could affix me with.

I pondered a moment there. The Dark Ocean was both a thing of wonder and fear, now that it was slightly better understood. It was the first journey into the Digital World that I remembered in its entirety, and the large expanse of water had brought a multitude of possibilities waiting to be exploited. Perhaps I chose the wrong path there, where what I had buried amidst guilt and jealousy rose to the surface as such opportunity allowed it a free reign, but ultimately, nothing short thereof would have brought me to the stage I stood upon today. It was one of those fickle things of destiny that only chose to see when the path had been finally left behind by almost all that really mattered.

I say almost, because the lessons of the past never really leave us. Nor do those things that spurred their hand in instances where all parties and points cannot be present to rectify. Despite what jealousy lead to, it is itself not a sin save what becomes of it. People tend to forget, caught in the woes of such, that jealousy also spurn improvement, and eventually, even as twisted and churned a path it may carry us through, it generally does. As it did for me.

I can admit it wholeheartedly now without falling again into its trap; I was jealous of Osamu, and I think he too may have been jealous of me. Looking back, caught up in his studies and the social stigma of being a genius, he rarely had time for anything of his own enjoyment, so I can only imagine how it felt when he saw me doing things I _wanted_ to do while his own time went to things he _had_ to. At least until I found myself under the same pressure, I hadn't ever seen how heard it had been for him.

And how hard it had been for Wormmon, trying to save a face plunging of a cliff, so to speak.

But we've both come past that. Old Demons sometimes visited to remind us lest we forget, but things were fine otherwise. And that was all.

'Just some old demons visiting,' I replied, giving him a smile and leaving out the strange creature that had nicked a bit of flesh off my ankle. In a sense, that could also be viewed as an old demon, a nameless, faceless creature reaching out for help from a person who could, or would, not give it to him.

He didn't ask again. He never does. Whatever he takes from the first reaction, he is satisfied with.

'Are we going to the Digital World today?' he asked instead, shifting onto the arm-rest as he noted the time.

'No,' I answered, a little sadly; we rarely missed a trip, whether with the group or by ourselves. 'Cram school, soccer training and a research assignment I've unfortunately left to the last minute to finish off.'

The look Wormmon gave me was reminiscent to my father scolding me for the same thing. Without the Dark Seed's influence, I needed to work harder, but my marks, save the landslide that proceeded the sudden loss of face, were still at a decent enough average. Having passed the junior high entrance exam last year and now at a school supposedly suited for my 'calibre' students (I had initially thought there was something segregational about the method, but it turned out that even the set standard through such exams could not stop the different sorts and variations of talent that collected under the same roof), the workload was enough to keep me occupied, interest, and under the bar of 'overload'. However, even then, there were times when one could simply not be bothered with all things life demanded, and something got left behind. Nineteenth century politics took the blow this time; it was something I simply wasn't interested in.

Though I did have to get that report done.

'It'll only take another hour, maybe a little more to complete and edit,' I said, partly in my own defence and partly to get the little critter to stop that look. 'But with school tomorrow, we can't really go to the Digital World at nine or ten at night.'

'That's true,' Wormmon replied, though looking a little put out. 'Can I come along?'

I considered. I normally didn't take Wormmon to school; the world knew about Digimon now, so there was no need to keep him a secret, but human school wasn't really the best place for a digimon with nothing to do. The cafeteria especially, and there wasn't much for someone to do with eight or so hours to kill by oneself (I think other Chosen tended to think the same way; no team managed to make its way together). And 'kaa-san normally enlisted him for help around the house, then later at work. She even once managed to worm him into an apron (Sarita-san managed to take a picture).

'You're not helping 'kaa-san today?' I asked, almost playfully, knowing quite well that she was going to visit a friend in Nerima-ku. 'With that pink apron with love hearts printed all over it?'

If he could blush, he would be. But he didn't answer the question, seeing as we both already knew it.

'I'll be good,' he said instead, putting on that begging puppy-dog look as best he could. He knew he could always win me over; any block of ice would melt into a gooey puddle with that look.

'All right, all right,' I laughed again. Somehow, it was easy now to do. There was a time, the longest time, where it felt so superficial, more a facade than a fact. And then afterwards...what had there been to laugh about? "I haven't been in the laughing mood lately," that's what I had said to Daisuke, but it wasn't really about the mood. More so, it was the laughter itself. A sign of happiness, something it felt at the time I was undeserving of. But now, past that, lighter, freer...happier, it came easier. And sometimes, I even felt like a little kid again. 'But we'd better eat quick or we won't be getting there at all.'

At that exact point, my father called us from the dining room.

A regular start to the day, as far as things went. A few things relatively out of the ordinary, but nothing extraordinary...yet. It's still so hard to believe that things suddenly changed so drastically, especially when the underlining cause is something that had rooted itself an eternity ago.


End file.
